EDITOR'S CHOICE
Make espresso-bar-style oatcakes at home

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor

Two versions of fat-free oat cakes: The darker ones are maple apple and the lighter ones are apple cinnamon, made with apple juice. Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser

Rummaging around on the Internet, I found that someone had gone before and created a recipe for nonfat apricot oat cakes using honey as a sweetener. But the resulting cake needed some fine tuning: the texture was heavy and the honey overpowered the delicate oats and lent a bitter, "off" taste.

On subsequent go-rounds, I reduced the amount of wheat flour, switched from honey to other forms of liquid sweetener and experimented with several kinds of dried fruit, testing the recipe's limits and finding them pretty stretchy.

The one thing you can't do: Don't use steel-cut oats. The resulting cakes really give your jaws a workout! (Besides, steel-cut oats are too expensive for this recipe.)

Use any dried fruit, or even fresh fruit; my favorites are dried apples, raisins, apricots, sweetened cranberries and dates (use the extruded, floured dates you can find in health-food stores). Sweetened cranberries can be very hard and chewy, so I toss them together with a tablespoon of boiling water to soften them before I use them.

Use any liquid sweetener. I think the more subtly flavored ones work best: plain old pancake syrup (or real maple syrup, if you're splurging), fruit juice, corn syrup or a fruit-based product such as FruitSource (a commercial sweetener made from rice and grape juice). Cut assertively flavored sweeteners, such as honey and molasses, half and half with corn syrup or fruit juice.

This is a fat-free recipe. To make it dairy- and egg-free, too, replace yogurt with silken tofu, soy or rice milk, and eliminate the egg white in favor of whatever egg substitute you prefer.

Make it wheat-free by eliminating the wheat flour: Use 5 cups oats; process 2 cups to make flour. The cakes will be a little heavier.

Don't add so much liquid that the batter is runny; it should be thick enough that you have to spoon it up.

Use a nonstick muffin pan or miniature Bundt cake pan and don't fill cups all the way; these are very dense cakes. If they're too deep, they won't cook through in the center.

Fat-free Oat Cakes

• 4 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
• 1 cup white wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup plain fat-free yogurt
• 1/2 cup liquid sweetener (see above) or sweet fruit juice
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 egg white, optional
• 1/2 - 3/4 cup dried fruit

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a food processor fitted with a steel blade, process 1 cup rolled oats to make oat flour.

In a large bowl, toss together oat flour, oats, wheat flour, baking powder and brown sugar until well-blended.

In another bowl, cream together yogurt, sweetener and vanilla.

Whisk egg white until light and frothy but not forming peaks. Fold into creamed mixture. Stir in dried fruit.

Add wet mixture to dry ingredients, stirring until blended. The batter will be thick, or even a bit stiff, depending on ingredients used.

Spoon about 1/3 cup of batter into nonstick muffin tins or miniature Bundt cake tins and press down. Bake for 17-20 minutes, depending on ingredients. The darker and richer the sweetener, the shorter the cooking time. Cakes should be at least golden brown.

Variations

Maple apple: Add 1 teaspoon cinnamon to dry ingredients. Use 3/4 cup dried apple or 1/2 cup dried apple and 1/4 cup raisins.

Cranberry cakes: Use 1/2 cup "craisins"(dried sweetened cranberries) and 1/4 cup raisins or dried apples. To soften cranberries, soak in a little boiling water and allow to sit a few minutes before putting them in batter.

Peach cakes: Drain 1/2 cup bottled peaches well or peel and pit fresh peaches; cut into chunks; toss with a little oat flour to coat. Add 1 teaspoon cinnamon to dry ingredients.

Orange-raisin cakes: Instead of sweetener, use 1/2 cup thawed orange juice concentrate. Add 1 tablespoon grated orange zest to dry ingredients and increase brown sugar to 2/3 cup. For dried fruit, use 1/2 cup raisins.

Almond-cranberry cakes: Use 1/2 cup sweetened dried cranberries and replace vanilla with 1 teaspoon almond extract.